黃果樹瀑布水簾洞

Huangguoshu Waterfall Water Curtain Cave

Useful Information

Location:	Guizhou, Anshun, Zhenning Buyei and Miao Autonomous County, 453 Xian Dao, Huangguoshu Town 561022. (25.9922138, 105.6652994)
Open:	No restrictions. [2025]
Fee:	free. [2025]
Classification:	Karst Cave Water Curtain Cave
Light:	Incandescent Coloured Light
Dimension:	L=134 m.
Guided tours:	self guided, D=1-2 h.
Photography:	allowed
Accessibility:	no
Bibliography:
Address:	Huangguoshu Waterfall, 453 Xian Dao, Huangguoshu Town 561022, Zhenning Buyei and Miao Autonomous County, Anshun, Guizhou, Tel: +86-851-3359-2156.
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History

Description

黃果樹瀑布水簾洞 (Huángguǒshù pùbù shuǐ lián dòng, Huangguoshu Waterfall Water Curtain Cave) is a 水簾洞 (Shuǐ lián dòng, Water Curtain Cave). Actually we invented the first name, because the official name is the second, and such Water Curtain Caves are extremely abundant in China. To keep them apart some kind of location is helpful, so we simply concatenated the location with the cave name. The Bashui River flows through a gorge in this are, and there are numerous waterfalls. The upper waterfall is only a few meters high and is more like large rapids. Then the main waterfall Huangguoshu comes. In the following bend of the river there are more rapids and finally a dam. The lower part of the river is actually an artificial lake.

Visitors arrive at the car park in the southwest of the waterfall. The trail runs north along the river on the western side, then makes a 180° turn and meets the waterfall which is on the eastern side. Here the mandatory name of the cave was chiseled into the rock. The trail continues through underground passage to the other side of the waterfall, with several openings which allow a view on the backside of the water curtain. Finally, the trail continues on the eastern side to a comfortable bridge which allows crossing the river back to the car park. This roundtrip seems to be free, no ticket required and no open hours. However, it’s definitely a good idea to do it during daylight hours. And we guess the electric light in the cave is on only at a certain time. As well as the lift from the car park into the gorge, which will probably operate only during the day. We recommend walking instead of taking the lift at least once, because of the outlook halfway up.

The descriptions of the cave are extremely "Chinese". It’s not the language, Google is very good at translating it. The problem is that it consists of poetry, the fantasy names of formations and superlatives like the number of entrances. On the other hand, the description is two pages long and lacks any fact. What looks like facts is either madness or a joke, for example "Water Curtain Cave is located at a height of 40 to 47 meters above the Huangguoshu Waterfall". Nope. The cave is behind the waterfall, not above. That’s a kind of sophistication which leaves us breathless.

The Huangguoshu Waterfall is 78 m high and 101 m wide, which is quite impressive. The cave is located somewhere in the middle, as the trail leads along the slope of the gorge at about 40 to 50 m above the water. The cave is more or less at the same height and obviously more than 100 m long. It’s not really a cave, its more or less a passage dug into the rock with large openigs to the waterfall. It seems the water is spritzen into the cave through the large openings, and so its impossible to cross the cave without getting wet. We guess a rain jacket or umbrella is a good idea.

We classified this site as a show cave, which actually requires that it is a natural cave. Unfortunately we were not able to find out how this cave was formed. Its obvious that there is a lot of tunneling, which is actually not really rare in show caves. There are a few formations which look like stalactites, which is a good argument for a natural cave, at least partly. Now it could be either a karst cave or a tufa deposit, but the whole site does not have tufa deposits, so we guessed that there were some karst cave passages which were either widened for th path, or which were discovered during the construction of the path.

The site was used for the filming of the 1987 Chinese film of the Monkey King, which is the reason why the site is so popular. On weekends, it may get quite crowded.